Clothes Make the Art

When Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu started up, all the practitioners wore the traditional Judo-style uniform known as a gi. This made sense, as Judo is where the new art grew from.

The new art spread, and aged. Eventually, an offshoot arose that questioned how realistic the gi was for training.

The reasoning was, nobody in the real world wears martial arts uniforms, so it would be much better to train without them.

Personally, I like training in a gi, but certainly understand the argument.

So, the rebels switched to training without wearing the gi. Over time, they settled on a standardized nogi style of dress.

You would think that they would have analyzed what people typically wore in the real world and adopted that to sync with their argument that the gi was too unrealistic. The strange thing is that they didn’t.

They chose clothing that is fun to grapple in. Almost all wear knee-length slippery nylon shorts. On their top halves they almost universally wear skin-tight, slippery rashguards.

If they were practising some sort of striking art, this wouldn’t matter, but in grappling it does. Grips are even more difficult than they are on bare skin. Participants slide around over top of one another in a truly remarkable fashion. It’s as if they are not only fighting naked, but also coated in a layer of vegetable oil.

Somehow I don’t consider learning to defend myself against naked, oily assailants a priority.

So just what would be realistic? The closest I’ve ever found have been the high-school students that I used to help train in wrestling.

They were all very body conscious, and would all practice wearing baggy sweat pants and sweat shirts. Some would get too hot, removing their sweatshirts, and make do with tshirts. Everything that they practiced in was exactly what people really wear. Heck, they even wore a form of running shoe.

Of course, they were’t training for real fighting, but were the best I’ve ever seen in dressing for the part.

Why does it matter? If you only practice in a gi, you will get far too used to doing things like collar chokes against people only dressed in exactly the same fashion. If you only practice in typical nogi fashion, you won’t be learning how to use clothing as a weapon at all.

Here are two fun, and interesting videos related to street technique related to clothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WkmgQQhVSw&t=98s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlCZ2xqReLU

Now, I’m not saying if I think gi or nogi is more realistic. Both have strengths and weaknesses in that regard. What I am saying is that everybody should just shut up about it. What I’m saying is  that it doesn’t matter.

Train in gi to learn how to use clothing as a weapon, and train nogi so you can fight without using clothing. Neither is better, or worse, but they are certainly different. If you don’t train both, then you are voluntarily allowing a gap to exist in your game.

I train both, but don’t enjoy nogi nights anywhere near as much.

Cunning Plan

Every so often the Universe gets things right.

You see, the UFC decided to get rid of the mens Flyweight division. This all seems to be some great idea of headman Dana White.

Standard wisdom states that smaller fighters generate the least interest, and therefore the least money. Maybe it’s true, and maybe it isn’t.

If shutting down the division is a smart business decision, wouldn’t the right thing be to announce that publicly, and above board. That isn’t really Dana White’s way. He is one of those guys who thinks he can manipulate the fans’ reactions the way he wants.

Cutting the division would be controversial, and some fans would get really angry about it. That translates into less profit.

Why would fans care, especially if it is the least popular division?

Well, the Champion at that weight was Demetrius Johnson. He won the belt back in 2012, and had an undefeated string of 12 championship victories. This made him by far the very best fighter that the UFC had.

How do you delete the division that has the best fighter.

Then, last August, Johnson lost to Henry Cejudo, and promptly left the UFC to fight for another organization. That’s when Dana White and the UFC made their move against the Flyweights. They started terminating fighter contracts all over the place.

There was some fan kickback, and that’s when Dana White’s “brilliant” plan to quash the discontent arose. Why not prove that the Flyweights were irrelevant by proving that the real best small fighter was actually the champion from the next bigger division.

The guy there, Dillashaw, is one of Dana White’s Golden Boys. He is excellent in every area of the game, and had just recently twice defeated another of White’s Golden Boys in a pair of superfights.

The plan was, Dillashaw would challenge Cejudo for Cejudo’s Flyweight belt, win, and then return to fighting at his usual weight but with two Champions’ belts in his trophy cabinet.

Then the UFC would officially terminate the Flyweights altogether.

It seemed likely to go exactly as Dana White wanted, and for a change the Golden Boy of his choosing is actually a wonderful fighter, unlike most of White’s favourites.

So it all got set up, with the fate of a division being left in the fighter’s hands.

The problem with the plan is that Dana White is nowhere as smart as he thinks he is.

If it all went exactly as expected, Dana White would get his way, and feel smart as the dickens. The problem was, what if the outcome went another way? What if Cejudo not only managed to beat Dillashaw, but beat him in a way that demonstrated total dominance?” Would that not return to the way things seemed when Demetrius Johnson ruled the Flyweight division; that the smallest Champ was perhaps the best fighter in the entire organization.

Round one started, and then ended 32 seconds later when the referee stepped in to save Dillashaw from serious injury. Flyweight Champion Henry Cejudo had not only crushed his much larger opponent, but also totally overturned Dana White’s cunning plan.

Immediately after the fight, Dana was in the ring waiting to award the winner with a new belt, and seemed far less than pleased with the outcome. He seemed more put out by Dillashaw’s loss than did Dillashaw himself.

Thank you, Universe.

Low Injury

I recently hooked onto a Facebook page dedicated to old people in Jiu-Jitsu.

On one recent posting, people were putting up their ages. Keep in mind that these all self-identify as “old.”

I am too lazy to scroll through the hundreds of responses that poured in, but did look through the first set of 49.

There was one guy who is in his early 70s, and two of us in our 60s. Forty five had ages spread pretty evenly though the 40s and 50s, and even one guy who is only in his 30s.

They all think they’re old.

The page itself is full of questions, often related to how much they seem to get hurt.

Jiu-Jitsu is pretty rough, and things happen, but if somebody is going home hurt all the time there are only three possible reasons.

The first possibility is that their training partners are a bunch of jerks. The second cause is that the student is just rolling wrong. The third and most likely cause is that both conditions are in action together.

I am 62 years old, and have been doing Jiu-Jitsu for over 7 years. That’s easily over a thousand classes, and several thousand rolls. I have been hurt, but only on a very few occasions. After any typical night of training and rolling, I go home with no damage in particular.

How do I manage this? Well, the first thing is that my partners are not jerks, at least not many of them. But let’s say I’m off travelling, and run into Mister Aggressive somewhere that I’m a guest. I’ve run into situation number one, and have done so many times in my travels.

There is some risk in this situation, but nothing major. It will become a problem only if I insist on acting in a way that multiplies the danger.

Recognize what is going on, and react accordingly. Strategy one is easy. Do not match what Mister Aggressive is doing. He wants the top position, and goes after it like a charging rhino. If you self-identify as “old” and you try and match him, you’ll likely get squashed. I don’t care if you are big, or strong, or whatever. You just might succeed, but you’ll pay for it. You’ll get hurt, or exhausted, or both.

What is the upside? There is none. The downside? You end up walking funny, or you are so tired that you get hurt with what should have been a pleasant roll later.

So what exactly do I do with Mister Aggressive? I defend, like Helio Gracie did as a young man, or Royce Gracie did underneath Dan Severn.

And as I defend, I keep in mind that this guy might get a submission on me, and he might apply it fast. To prevent injury, I keep myself ready to tap. If he gets me, I want to tap well before any damage. Usually, this isn’t necessary, but remaining ready is only prudent.

Try it. It sounds easy, but for a lot of folks it isn’t.

Some groups don’t value defence, and the culture there pushes people to meet opponents head on, even younger, bigger, stronger, and psycho ones.

Lots of folks also consider tapping out to be some sort of disgrace. It isn’t, unless you do it too late and get hurt as a result.

Let’s add up how many days of training I’ve lost due to Jiu-Jitsu injury in the past year… it was… none. There were a ton of rolls in those 12 months, against opponents of every size, strength, and skill level. The only constant was that every single one of those opponents was younger than me; most were 30 to 40 years younger.

That’s not quite true. I did roll a couple of times at Gracie University in Los Angeles against a friend named Bill, who is a bit older than me. All of the rest were younger.

You don’t get better by missing training. You get better by being on the mat. You don’t get better getting hurt. You get better by surviving, and being on the mat. You don’t even get better by getting exhausted, as that can lead to getting hurt and missing training. You get better by being on the mat.

Of course, I might be underestimating how important it is for somebody to “win” a roll on their school’s mat. Perhaps there is a wager involved regarding a million dollars. That might encourage me to push harder. Maybe the person being rolled with is a lifelong enemy. Maybe that will do it. Perhaps the winner will get a shiny trophy or championship belt. Maybe your partner is a maniac, and is really attacking you, and you must crush them in order to survive.

I suspect none of these things are true. Rolling is a learning tool, and maybe you learn better when your neck gets seriously cranked, but I don’t. I like learning to be fun. Getting hurt is about as un-fun as anything can possibly be.

None of this means that I lay there on my back like a lump. It’s only with the craziest, most potentially dangerous opponents that it will look something like that; 100% survival. With trusted folk, you wouldn’t even know that is in my mindset. Most people fall somewhere in between, and I roll accordingly.

Some of my very favourite rolls have been with bigger, stronger, and aggressive partners.

I remember one school in particular. The instructors were great, and welcoming, as were most of the students, but there was a cadre of tough Blue Belts who seemed to take my presence as some kind of double-dog dare, and who really, really wanted to dominate me, even though my belt was Purple.

Each would come at me hard, and I would defend. Without exception it went just like Helio Gracie said it should. They would push really hard, and I would fend them off. They would start to gas out, even though they should not have let that happen against an old man. I would play at escapes just enough to keep them from slowing down, and by the end of the roll I could control them with ease. Survive, exhaust, control.

It was fun as hell, and it was also pure Jiu-Jitsu.